Revision as of 00:25, 28 January 2014

Tvheadend is a TV streaming server for Linux supporting DVB-S, DVB-S2, DVB-C, DVB-T, ATSC, IPTV, and Analog video (V4L) as input sources and can be used as a PVR backend of XBMC. Version 3.4 and up also include support for timeshifting.

Contents

1 Preinstalled options

The following XBMC/OS distributions come with Tvheadend already installed, or easily installed as an option. These are great one-stop solutions that can greatly simplify the installation of the backend, as well as various other benefits unique to those distros.

OpenELEC - In addition to coming with Tvheadend software and a Tvheadend XBMC PVR add-on, OpenELEC has both current XBMC v12 builds (with native PVR support) as well as special XBMC v11 PVR builds.

2 Installing Tvheadend

Basic

Most Debian and Ubuntu installations can take advantage of the standard APT installation methods for getting Tvheadend installed, either using a GUI package manager, or from the command line using "apt-get install tvheadend". The install procedure normally creates a user named "hts", which is the user Tvheadend will run as. You should check that the "hts" user has sufficient permissions to your tuner (usually /dev/dvb/adapter0/frontend0). Running the command "sudo adduser hts video" should be sufficient.

3 Tvheadend quick start guide

Note: This is just the most basic steps needed to get a signal from your PVR backend to XBMC. This guide probably doesn't include everything you will want to do, like name channels, get the electronic programming guide (EPG/TV guide) set up, remove channels, etc.

All configuration is done in a web browser. If you are on the same machine that Tvheadend is installed then point your browser to http://localhost:9981 . If you are on a different machine than Tvheadend, then point your browser to http://IP.ADDRESS.GOES.HERE:9981 , where IP.ADDRESS.GOES.HERE = the IP address of the machine that Tvheadend is installed on. For example: http://192.168.0.3:9981

3.

Click on the Configuration tab

Click on the TV Adapters tab

Click on the arrow for the drop-down menu

Select your TV tuner adapter

If your tuner hardware is not detected or is having issues, check http://linuxtv.org for driver support.

4.

You will see a window like this. Now you will want to click on "Add DVB Network by location".

5.

From the menus select your location and the type of signal you are trying to receive. In this example we're using a generic list for QAM, a US signal for cable TV.

Then click "Add DVB Network" at the bottom.

6.

Wait for the number under "Muxes awaiting initial scan" to reach zero. If the number under "Services" is also zero, then that means Tvheadend has not picked up any channels. You may need to check your hardware or if you've selected the right signal type (step 5), or even your tuner driver (see http://linuxtv.org for driver support).

It might be possible that the firmware can't be found. Check dmesg for messages like the following:

In this case, the Hauppauge WinTV-HVR-950Q tuner can't locate the firmware. You should download the desired firmware (the 950Q firmware can be found at http://www.kernellabs.com/firmware/xc5000/) and place in the correct directory (for Ubuntu this is /lib/firmware/). You should then see this message in dmesg:

Click on "Map DVB services to channels". You should now be able to pick up TV channels in XBMC once you configure the Tvheadend add-on configuration in the next section, "#Connecting XBMC to Tvheadend".

4 Connecting XBMC to Tvheadend

Note: Most versions of Kodi have the PVR add-ons included by default. Your first step in setting up a given PVR add-on is to enable it by going to Settings -> Add-ons -> Disabled add-ons -> PVR and selecting your add-on and then pressing "enable".

For Ubuntu clients click "SHOW" for PVR add-on install instructions

PVR add-ons should be installed automatically, unless users configured their package manager to not install recommended packages. To manually install a PVR add-on: